John Dyson

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How about giving people patches that would make them allergic to meat?<p>Just in case you were looking for some ideas for your next dystopian novel… in a new feature, the BBC reports on ideas for combating anthropogenic climate change by engineering humans to use less resources.<p>How about giving people …

<i>“Temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion,”</i> Joseph Conrad wrote in his reflection on writing and the role of the artist. And yet it seems to be through our temperaments, not our rational deliberation, that we absorb so many of our impressions. But how can we …

Isaac Asimov was an extraordinary mind and spirit — the author of more than 400 science and science fiction books and a tireless advocate of space exploration, he also took great joy in the humanities (and once annotated Lord Byron’s epic poem “Don Juan”), championed humanism over religion, and …

Biases often work in surreptitious ways — they sneak in through the backdoor of our conscience, our good-personhood, and our highest rational convictions, and lodge themselves between us and the world, between our imperfect humanity and our aspirational selves, between who we believe we are and how …

<i>“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work,”</i> Chuck Close scoffed. <i>“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood,”</i> Tchaikovsky admonished. <i>“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too,”</i> Isabel Allende …

Questions like why our world exists and what nothing is have occupied minds great and ordinary since the dawn of humanity, and yet for all our scientific progress, they continue to do so, yielding only hypotheses rather than concrete answers. But there is something immutably heartening in the …

Every year, intellectual impresario and <i>Edge</i> editor <b>John Brockman</b> summons some of our era’s greatest thinkers and unleashes them on one provocative question, whether it’s the single most elegant theory of how the world works or the best way to enhance our cognitive toolkit. This year, he sets out on …

Given my soft spot for big thinkers’ answers to young people’s questions about life, I was thrilled when reader Dave Anderson shared the story of his mother’s exchange with none other than Albert Einstein. When Marion Block Anderson, an altogether exceptional woman, was a freshman at Oberlin …

A billion-dollar industry has grown up around our desire to be more intelligent. But is it really possible to make yourself smarter?<p>What happens when you attach several electrodes to your forehead, connect them via wires to a nine-volt battery and resistor, ramp up the current and send an …

<i>“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,”</i> Freud argued in his influential treatise <i>The Interpretation of Dreams</i> in 1900. <i>“The earth is heavy and opaque without dreams,”</i> Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary in 1940. <i>“In the olden days, people</i> …

<i>Part 5 of the</i> TED Radio Hour <i>episode</i> Spoken And Unspoken.<p><b>About Amy Cuddy's TEDTalk</b><p>Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how "power posing" can affect our brains, and might even have an impact on our chances for …

How did humanity go from a tribe governed by superstition to a species on the hunt for the Higgs Boson and the deepest secrets of the cosmos? In <b>The Universe in a Nutshell</b>, theoretical physicist and prolific author <b>Michio Kaku</b> — who has previously helped us unravel the mysteries of time — explores …

Ever since psychology godfather William James first expounded the crucial role of habit in how we live and who we become, modern psychology has sought to figure out how we can rewire our bad habits, maximize our willpower, and use habits to optimize our productivity. And yet, if the market for …

<i>“Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself,”</i> William James wrote in his influential meditation on habit, <i>”so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like</i> …

In 2012, I wrote about a lovely book titled <i>Big Questions from Little People & Simple Answers from Great Minds</i>, in which some of today’s greatest scientists, writers, and philosophers answer kids’ most urgent questions, deceptively simple yet profound. It went on to become one of the year’s best …

When tapped effectively, “Social Proof” can be used to crank up business, online and off.<p>When you see two cafes side by side, and one is packed with lively people and the other one is empty, which one would you go to for a coffee? Why?<p>Most people will go to the packed cafe. But what if the empty …

<b>Carl Sagan</b> was not only one of the greatest scientific minds in modern history, he was also an unrelenting humanist with profound insight on spirituality, psychology, and even literature. From <i>The Meaning of Life: Reflections in Words and Pictures on Why We Are Here</i> (<i>public library</i>) — the same …